SACRAMENTO COUNTY (CBS13) — Sue Frost is one of two women currently serving on the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors.
That’s something that runs contrary to language in county law. She wants to change that.
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Laws that date back more than 100 years outline employee requirements and seem to indicate that only a man should apply with phrases such as “He must reside in such district during his incumbency.”
Frost’s position as a supervisor falls under those guidelines.
“Words matter and what we say impacts how people think,” she said.
She’s asking the county’s attorney to rewrite the laws to be gender-neutral.
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“Women have played a really important part of the history of Sacramento County for over 100 years,” she said. “We need to update our ordinances, all of them, to represent women accurately.”
McGeorge School of Law professor John Myers says new state statutes clarify any ambiguity.
“It’s very clear and it states specifically in California that the masculine includes the feminine,” he said.
So why haven’t the laws been changed to reflect that?
“It would be a Herculean task because there are literally tens of thousands of uses of the masculine pronoun in our statutes,” he said.
Frost hopes to announce changes to the county laws by International Women’s Day in March.